


The Road to Hell

by orphan_account



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Violence, C137cest, Crime, Drugs, F/F, F/M, Gang Violence, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, PTSD, Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 08:40:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: AU/Canon Divergence: Rick doesn’t escape Galactic Federation prison, because they already gain the codes for interdimensional travel through alternate means. Morty spends four years trying to get him back, it turns out “I can handle it if you go” isn’t exactly true, not when Morty’s prepared to wage war against an entire galaxy. The world isn't right, the Galactic Federation changes too many things, as Morty grows - he can start to understand a lot of why Rick was the way he was. He understands, and worse? He's following in his footsteps.'It's not that I want Grandpa Rick back,' Morty thinks bitterly, clenching his jaw. 'I need Grandpa Rick back.'And he'll go to any lengths to get him.





	The Road to Hell

_{Smith Family Household - Seattle, USA - 2015}_

 

Life under the Galactic Federation was not the kind of fun you’d typically expect if you imagined aliens landing on Earth and sewing their strangeness and technological advancements into daily life. It was a long, monotonous ache to get through a single day. Everything was meticulously ordered and planned, everyone was watching everyone – there was no spontaneity in the universe anymore. The long arm of the law seeped into every aspect of life, and not just at jobs or at school, but even at homes. As much as the Smith family were able to adopt to the presence of a robot assistant, and Beth was at first, thankful to not have to do housework anymore, it was a constant reminder. A reminder that their lives were not normal nor would they ever be.

 

Conroy wasn’t a bad robot to be fair, his AI was friendly enough – but it was just the fact he was constantly there, whirring and watching. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say he was likely the eyes and ears of the Galactic Federation, whether the AI was conscious enough to want to be or not. It made the tension in the Smith household palpable, especially in the quiet moments. Beth seemed to do her best to ignore it, finding solace in the bottom of a bottle of wine. Her services were not required in a world where alien medical advancements rendered her job pointless when horses were as healthy as they’d ever been. Instead, she was now submitted into a Re-Education Integration Program, since humans with some medical prowess knew their own biology better than most others, doctors still had a place in the world, but got given some additional training. Horse surgeons? Less so, so most nights, when not drinking, Beth could be found curled up on the couch, forcing herself through a hefty text on alien biology. In a way, it gave her purpose – she had the chance to become a “real” surgeon in a sense, even if it meant working for another medical certification all over again. It was as soul-destroying as it was invigorating.

 

Jerry was easier to please – each day it felt like he came home with a new title, and a new medal to show for it. The pencil pushers of the world were quite content with the changes made to their lives, but for everybody else – hundreds of thousands of futures changed. People became numbers in a sense, and if they had no talent, they were just assigned a purpose. Morty couldn’t say he was fond of the idea – getting a useless job like Jerry’s, being doomed to a life of constant bureaucracy if he’s lucky, as being the grandson of an intergalactic terrorist essentially put him on the “No-Fly” list and essentially tethered him to Earth. To never go off-world ever again. There's times with Rick - usually when he thinks the pair of them may honestly die, where he wished he could take a breather and that adventures could be a little less deadly and a little more mundane, but having tasted the multiverse only to have it ripped out from under you? It's a special kind of torture that Morty didn't realise just how depressing it could be until he was suffering it himself, Summer included - and she'd adventured a lot less than Morty had. They'd had a taste, and now - they were painfully aware of all they lost.

 

“Morty, we can’t go off-world thanks to Grandpa Rick,” Summer said, icily. “-What’s the point of going to college? Doing anything? You know, _he_ wouldn’t stand for this,” and her tone seemed to suggest ‘so why the hell are we?’ – but that was a fast way for Summer to get into trouble. To dig herself into a hole she cannot get out of. Morty knew this for a fact, and spent the better parts of his evenings trying to stop her from doing something stupid and impulsive. “When he doesn’t like something about the world, he changes it. He doesn’t just sit around doing nothing!”

 

“Look Summer, I agree with you, I do – but – we can’t even---” Morty swallowed thickly, glancing around for any presence of Conroy before continuing.

 

“We can’t even stand in grandpa’s garage for longer than five minutes before Conroy comes. A—and I agree that – that living this way, it’s… I mean – I don’t like it,” Morty admitted softly. He gently shuts Summer’s door so it feels like they have some privacy, before she has the brilliant idea to pull out her old, pink stereo from under her bed. She picks a random CD from her scant pile since her switch to the iPod, putting it on before sliding it as closely to the door as possible, so the sound will seep out from underneath and provide them some small privacy.

 

“It’s – it’s weird, like they’re trying so hard for this to be the new normal, but it’s not. J-j-just yesterday, that kid, Jeremy? He’s just gone – a-and all he said was he didn’t like his job assignment and wanted a new one. People just…” Morty trails off and Summer grimaces, knowing exactly what he’s talking about.

 

“Disappear?” she’s a lot cruder about it, but it’s true. There’s no lying or beating around the bush, pretending that everything is alright when it’s just the two of them. They’re absolutely honest with each other, and with the world the way that it was, it feels like they might be the only two people who are. Morty grimaces but nods, slipping his hands into his pockets and slouching helplessly.

 

“Tell me about it,” Summer snorted, the same had happened to Jenny Ridley, and an upper year she used to see mill around who simply disappeared one day and stopped coming to school. There were probably more, but she couldn’t bring herself to think about it too much. It all felt too sinister to acknowledge, especially if nobody could do anything about it.

 

“How long you reckon until it’s us? We’re on their watch list Morty, and eventually something’s gonna give if we don’t keep our heads down. I thought about joining the underground _just_ to get out of this shitshow but – just the fact we’re related to Grandpa Rick is gonna put too much heat on them and ruin whatever they’re doing if I’m caught, y’know?”

 

Morty could have lashed out at her for even considering it. He understood why, but it didn’t stop his expression contorting to one of both betrayal and slight anger at how impulsive she was ready to be because she missed Rick. They all did – well, maybe not Jerry – but they did, they just chose to handle it in different ways.

 

“And then you’d disappear too! And then – and then I’d be all alone, and it’d just be me, mom and dad and do you think I could deal with all of that? Maybe you could, but I can’t! When he sits down and – and talks about his stupid job and his stupid promotions, I want to slam his head into his plate!” Morty fumed – lashing out suddenly, making his sister take a step back in surprise. He always seemed so calm, and relatively passive about this whole infuriating ordeal, so it was good to see a spark of life in him, even if it wasn’t a happy one.

 

“Nobody here is happy except him, even mom’s just trying to make do! E-e-everyone’s faking and pretending all the time!” Morty is seething at this point “-and your idea is to just bail? What, like Grandpa Rick did? ‘Hey I’ll join the sewer people because it’s easier than facing up to harsh reality?’ newsflash Summer, this is the world now! And _Rick did this! The guy you’re trying to be like!_ ”

 

Summer hated it – it was like Morty had given up on Grandpa Rick already, despite the fact that he was the favourite, despite the fact that out of anybody in the world he could want to adventure with and spend time with, it was always Morty. Hated how he blamed Rick, even though it was true, even if he abandoned the family with some altruistic, moral reason in mind, the world still suffered for his choices – hell – the _family_ was.

 

She opens her mouth to scream in defence of their grandfather, but Morty stops her, stepping into her face and looking up at her with an uncharacteristically harsh look that makes the words die on her tongue.

 

“He shouldn’t be your hero Summer! I get that you miss him, _I miss him_ – but he was an ass! He was selfish, and cruel sometimes, he made – he made mistakes a lot, but the difference is when people like Rick make mistakes, it’s everyone else who suffers! He’s – he’s more like some kind of really fucked up God than anything, and if you think following his example is a good idea than you’re not as smart as – as I thought you were!” Morty stammered out, feeling his heart start to beat painfully in his chest when her rage began to melt into a somewhat crestfallen look as her little brother shouted at her.

 

The nasty feeling was, she was betting he was probably correct – nobody knew Rick better than Morty.

 

“A-a-and if he wanted to be here, don’t think for a second he wouldn’t be!” because Rick had the power, Morty utterly believed. There was nothing that Rick Sanchez couldn’t do, he held far too much control over the universe for any one person to ever healthily wield and he was not a healthy person. His words were cutting, and he could see he’d upset his sister – he would have apologised except… nothing he said was wrong. Not really. He’s quick and brutal when it comes to squashing her idea of joining the Underground, with the Federation’s reject people of those who simply refused to conform to the new world order, but didn’t bare wasting resources on imprisoning. He’s dissuaded her for the time being, Morty knows – but all it takes is one more person to disappear. One more person, maybe somebody she actually cares about from school, and he knows he’ll be standing right back in her bedroom, having this exact same argument.

 

Every muscle in his body tensed when he walked out of her room and heard her slam the door behind him. ‘ _Never mind that’_ – Morty told himself, ‘ _it’s for her own damn good.’_

 

Morty, uncomfortably, finds himself justifying a lot of things by saying that phrase as of late. Of course he misses Rick, more than he’s comfortable admitting, if he’s totally honest. If somebody had asked him before this mess who his best friend was, and he was obligated to tell the truth, it’d be Rick’s name that comes out in a heartbeat, and damn if that isn’t the most embarrassing thing? That Morty’s best friend is somebody who had always emphasised how utterly expendable and replaceable he was. How he was a means to several ends. He knows his grandpa loves him, on some level he must – he does things - illogical things- that you’d only do if you loved someone else, but it doesn’t mitigate the fact he’s chaos personified. It doesn’t make it any easier to swallow the fact that Rick Sanchez is an utterly self-destructive force to himself and the people around him, even if he loves them. He probably doesn’t even love to the fullest extent he should – the way that Morty does – when he thinks about his family. Again, because they’re so expendable, because there’s so many of them across the multiverse and Hell if Rick had been so inclined, even genetically perfect clones that mimic their personalities down to the minutia could have sufficed.

 

Summer isn’t even his original Summer, or Morty’s. The difference for Morty is, he cares about Summer regardless. His love is capable of expanding across dimensions and worlds to love every incarnation of them if he’s so inclined. If he sees a visage of his family die, it haunts him. He isn’t jaded. He still loves. Rick can’t even love himself. If he did, maybe he’d stop destroying himself in the way that he does. Drinking, suicidal missions, drugs – all of it. All the stupid shit that the smartest man in the universe should think better of doing.

 

When Morty’s feet stop him in front of Rick’s old bedroom, his stomach gives an uncomfortable lurch. He checks for Conroy out of the corner of his eye, but hears him distantly downstairs, likely busying himself with making dinner, so he steps inside. Rick’s room is pretty unremarkable, for the kind of man that he is. He doesn’t keep inventions in there as a rule if he can help it, but strewn up ideas and strange interconnecting puzzle pieces of his life are adorned on the walls, linked together with sharpie. A few of them are people that Morty’s even met, and that’s jarring to him – like a reminder that it’s been too long since he’s been off-world.

 

Jerry had murmured something about turning this into a rec room at some point, or a study, but the looks from both of the Smith children had silenced him, while Beth stared blankly into her pancakes. Slow as he could be – even Jerry could read the room, and didn’t bring the topic up again. Morty’s glad – he likes that nobody has been in here or moved things around. It’s a bit like a shrine now, especially since the Federation had managed to bypass some of Rick’s security measures and do a cursory sweep of the garage. Morty knows Rick doesn’t keep all of his most important things out for just anyone, not with idiots like…well, everyone around. There’s easily a trove of things that nobody has found yet – Morty knows that for a fact, but the knowledge does him little good for right now. He’s just a kid – a kid who doesn’t really know what to do. Just all the things he shouldn’t do. Like run away. Running away was stupid, all it did was make people hurt.

 

_‘I can handle it if you go…’_

God, why was that the last thing he’d ever said to Rick? Followed up by a monologue that did almost nothing to say that he actually – _no_ , fuck – the thought made his stomach hurt. He didn’t even want to finish it. He’d be a hypocrite after what he said to Summer and yet here he is, standing in Rick’s bedroom.

 

Loving Rick Sanchez is like a curse, it’ll hurt you in the end, because that’s all that ever happens to the things Rick loves. Morty has learned this after a few years by his side, you can want his affection and his approval but he’ll seldom ever give it unless there’s some endgame. He feels like the genuine moments only exist in handfuls compared to the rivers of manipulation and drunken cruelty. He stands there for what feels like forever before he realises why he hasn’t moved. It’s because the room is so untouched that his very presence there feels almost sacrilegious, like he’s desecrating the man’s personal space. It feels like if he disturbs anything, that Rick might come barrelling in, grabbing him by the leg and yelling at him for touching his stuff. Of course, when it doesn’t happen, Morty moves – disturbing all the dust along the way, just running his fingers down the dresser and taking in a deep inhale.

 

 _‘I can handle it if you go…’_ is the biggest lie he’d ever told himself, never mind that he’d said it to Rick, and watched the masked hurt behind his electric blue eyes, so filled with resolve. He wants to believe that he can be as cold as Rick on his worst days but be better than him, and know when to put priorities first, like family. He’s replaceable, and Morty supposes – so is Rick, but he lacks the constitution to put any weight behind the thought. Replacing his Rick seems so intrinsically wrong that he cannot stomach dwelling on it, even as a hypothetical.

 

He decides to walk around the room, idly running his hands over every surface they came into contact with – he isn’t even really sure why he’s doing this, if he wants to believe he can be okay without Rick, being in his room isn’t going to help. Morty cannot seem to pull himself away, and it’s probably curiosity, since he’d never really gotten free reign over Rick’s bedroom like this before when he was around. His fingers stop short of the walk-in wardrobe, pushing open the white shutter style doors – he didn’t know what he expected to find. Maybe some stupid part of him hoped for some Deus Ex Machina contraption that could reset everything to before the Galactic Federation sunk their tendrils into Earth. Instead, all he could see were two long, fine lab coats in decent condition, and stacks of shirts and pants. He grabs the most worn one on instinct – couldn’t tell you why – and drags it with him to Rick’s cot.

 

Okay, so maybe he misses Rick more than he’s letting on – but in this private moment, with the door shut and none of the Smith’s the wiser, he can allow himself a moment to wrap himself in the overlarge jacket and stare vacantly on the cot.

 

Morty wonders briefly, why even when Rick is trying to do the right thing, he ends up hurting people. Is it because however smart he is, he’s just not very good at accurately reading what the good thing to do for someone else is? He wondered why it always had to be that way, and unconsciously wraps his arms around his torso, feeling the long, trailing sleeves of the lab coat protectively swathe him. He’d by lying if he said he didn’t find some small comfort in it.

 

_‘I can handle it if you go…’_

 

He recalls that it is when Rick was drunk, he either faced his most brutal barbs, or his kindest gestures, and he never knew which things he meant and what he didn’t. Navigating Rick’s emotions was damn near impossible, as they were a complete minefield and he could be frigid at the worst of times, before swinging to the polar-opposite on a whim. It gave him no stability. It made loving Rick completely unsafe, even if Morty could trust him to make decisions that don’t hurt the rest of the family, Rick had a habit of turning love on its head, shattering tender moments with careless words like – don’t read into this, or you’re expendable and even the time-honoured classic “You’re a piece of shit, Morty,” whenever he does something wrong.

 

 _‘I can handle it if you go….’_ He wants to believe he can, because a big part of him lacks faith in Rick’s abilities to hang in there. Could you blame him? Really? He bailed on tiny planet, he bailed on Cronenberg-world – for fuck’s sake, he’d bailed on Beth, his own daughter more than once now.

 

Morty sags and drops his arms, before resuming his idle, curious searches. He reached over to the bedside table. He opened a drawer, and sighed quietly when he saw pairs of socks neatly arranged, all of them white, all of them meticulously put away. His own top drawer always had his more intimate things – his secretive shit – like his lubricant and things he’d just generally not want to leave out in the open. It’s only when he begins moving the socks around idly that he feels a small metal box underneath.

 

A wild chill of excitement goes down him before he can stop himself – finding something private and personal of Rick’s could still manage to do that to him. He gets ahead of himself, admittedly. His mind raced with all of the possibilities only for them to shatter when it works out to be a simple jewellery box.

 

Huh, strange – he never really took Rick for jewellery, he’s not even certain if he’d ever seen him wear any. He props the box open, as it doesn’t have a lock, and furrows his brow curiously. Inside were a handful of silver and gold looking things. Earrings he recognises, and some body jewellery that he isn’t quite sure where it would go necessarily.

 

Rick was a guy of many strange and odd secrets, some immense, and some just a bit more mundane, like this. In fact, it was so normal that Morty felt a little hysterical, bitter giggle leave him before he could stop it. It’s only when he glances up and pays attention to the old framed photo by his bedside that he pays closer mind. It’s a picture of Rick – from his Flesh Curtains band days – with Birdperson and Squanchy at his side. He looks a lot happier in it, he had to admit and better with his hair combed down and back like that. In the photo however, are some of the earrings in Morty’s hands.

 

 _‘Even Rick likes to hold onto good things, sometimes…’_ he frowns when he detects something strange at the bottom. It’s definitely an earring, but it doesn’t have any that match, and upon closer inspection, finds it to be a tiny piece of purple technology. It’s nothing super impressive, it looks more like an alien hearing aid the closer he examines it, though there is a clear clasp that denotes it has to go through the flesh, with a tiny piece that arches up and nestles unnoticeably in the ear canal. Morty vaguely recognises it as a translator, he’s seen some of his newer, more alien teachers who struggle with understanding different dialects and languages using these. He wonders, blithely, what languages it’s programmed to understand, before deciding to shove it in the lab coat pocket, and placing the rest of Rick’s treasures back the way he found them.

 

It’s stupid, but maybe some part of him wants to preserve Rick, though he’s a man of extreme faults and yes, a complete ass sometimes, he’s not just those things. He’s also the guy who took him to Blips and Chitz, the guy who got him and Summer the best icecream in the galaxy (even if it had flies in it), the guy who never needed him to articulate his pain for him to understand it, like after the incident at The Thirsty Step. Rick has good parts, even if they’re buried under everything else, they’re still there.

 

When he shuts his eyes, he can remember Rick ripping off his time stabilisation collar and putting it around his neck with zero hesitation, and that’s the thought that breaks a hole in his wall of resentment and dismissiveness. He throws himself into Rick’s cot, raising his knees up to his chest and is suddenly drowning his senses in the faintest smell of sweat, vodka and – and Rick – the sheets still smelled like Rick.

 

 _'It's not that I want Grandpa Rick back,'_ Morty thinks bitterly, clenching his jaw and fisting some of the forest green bedsheet. _'I need Grandpa Rick back.'_ Rick was the only person in the galaxy who had a single hope of resetting things, of somehow making everything in the world right again, and Morty knows it.

 

God, he hated to admit it, but deep down, he really missed Rick. But he couldn’t just – he couldn’t just do something stupid and impulsive, like he would do, or what he’d screamed at Summer _not_ to do, trying to avoid thoughts of the graves that lay outside, of both he and his grandfather, his mind insufferably reminding him of the portal gun that has a high chance of being on Rick C-136's corpse, something he'd narrowly stopped his sister from digging up. For the longest of time, Morty does his best to feign contentedness as his classmates disappear one by one every time they dare raise a hair of malcontent, spending every few nights sitting on Rick's cot - far more times that he's comfortable admitting.

 

….All it took was for Summer to disappear, like so many others, for Morty Smith to eat every single word he’d said to her that day.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_{Mexico - Sinaloa, 2019}_

 

 

There’s few things that Morty can compare to the pain of being stuffed into a crate after his growth spurt and then forced into awkward contortion for upwards of twenty-six hours. Standing in the blistering, Mexican heat ranked up there pretty easily though. His shoes feel worn down to the soles so it may as well be his bare feet suffering the scorching sandy roads. It encouraged him to keep moving, even though his bones ached from the horrid road from Seattle down to El Paso. The break had been enough to make the second drive at least slightly more bearable. When he stumbled out of the truck, he winced as metal coiled around his forearms to his wrists grated his skin.

 

“Is this – is this really necessary?” Morty forced himself to keep the stammer out of his voice, for whatever that was worth. A tall man, who’d been in the driver side seat, stepped out in front of Morty and pulled his hands forward delicately to look at his exposed arms, dark eyes running over where the metal grazed them. He was wrapped from forearm to wrist in barbed wire, and led – quite embarrassingly, by one tugging him around the neck, and so as not to cut anywhere important and put himself at actual risk, he remembered trailing after Garcia like a dog on a lead.

 

He remembered trying not to unclench his bladder and stop himself from thinking just how deep in the shit he was in now, with nobody but himself to really rely on and however much he could count on Garcia for. Too many nights he'd cried himself red raw and admitted softly into his pillow that he's too deep. He's in way too deep.

 

“Sorry Esé, but if I’m vouching for you, they like absolute submission. Trust me – ay? I got you this far,” the man spoke with a thick, Spanish accent that Morty was slowly growing accustomed to. He did occasionally mutter about the futility of what he was doing though, despite his comforting tones, which didn’t help Morty who could hear him from the crate when he paused his music to spare them both a headache as the drive got longer, and longer. Eyes adjusting to the light, he could only make out endless desert with bits of dead green scattered over the landscape. They’re in the Coahuila Desert, or just out of it, anyway. It’s one of Mexico’s more barren wastelands, one of the less lucky deserts to not be a hub of industry or tourism, it can only be described as a sweaty death-trap to anybody lost and without enough water.

 

Morty remembers the day quite clearly – the day he decided he had to leave, but had no idea where to go. How many stupid risks he’d taken, and how much he’d banked on a name. It had worked, of course, because he seems to have inherited reckless luck, but even luck could run out, and Morty felt very much like a cat on their ninth life. If someone had told him that in two years’ time, he’d be sat across from the man who’d brought him here, laughing over tequila, he’d have thought they were absolutely out of their gourd.

 

Morty’s sitting in a bar in Sinaloa across from the man who’d lugged him there two years ago. _Cantina Dos Segundos_ – it was his companion’s favourite place to be. Morty can’t say he grew to like drink much, you’d sooner find him with a bottle of water than with any booze to hand. The drinking culture there was intense and rich, but he supposed indulging just reminded him too much of Rick – and then he’d stop.

 

Garcia, the man across from him – could read Morty like a book now, even when a great many people couldn’t. He could tell when he was thinking about his grandfather, the man whose very name was the one thing to secure Morty’s life when Garcia was no longer sure if simply vouching for him to El Tio would be enough to keep him safe. Sanchez. The jefe whose name was known as the most prolific intergalactic terrorist to ever grace their galaxy, even El Tio had to know who he was after the Federation grounded themselves on Earth and changed the game entirely. Garcia, bless his heart, tries to keep the mood light – and is grinning ear to ear, slapping his hand down on the oak wood bar table.

 

“Eh, remember how fuckin’ green you were? I swear when Vicente pushed you to the floor you were gonna vomit on El Tio’s shoes,” Garcia throws his head back, and lets out a bark-like laugh that attracts a few stares from other patrons, who quickly go back to their business upon recognising at least vaguely, who they both were.

 

“I was sixteen!” Morty snaps back but with no real malice, fingers resting against his glass of sweet, red tepache while Garcia easily throws down another shot, before shuddering when he finally begins to feel the sting. “-Besides, for all of me saving your ungrateful ass from the _federales,_ you didn’t – you didn’t exactly help,” he closes his eyes, and casts his mind to that moment where he was crumbled on his knees in the Coahuila Desert, feeling the barbed wire coiled around his arms and grating against his skin when he struggled, not predicting the boot that came flying into his back and set him into a pile on the scorching hot ground.

 

“You can cry, you can even piss yourself if you want Esé, but for the love of God – don’t scream,” had been Garcia’s words, he could quote them to this day. “-because that’s great advice to tell a sixteen-year-old kid whose in way over his head,” he added with no small amount of sarcasm. That’s what he was, after all, he’d been a teenager way in over his head. With two more years under his belt following the incident, he can say he’s at least a little better, but he’s still – still in the wrong place. He knows he is when he wakes up at 3AM in a dingy motel in downtown Sinaloa, hiding from the Juarez, staring lustfully at the portal gun glowing that indulgent green hue. It almost begged him to just give up on this idea of a great, lofty plan to break his grandfather out of the highest security jail in the galaxies, and to just portal there, pull him out and portal anywhere but Earth. God, he fantasised about it sometimes. He knew he’d get caught though, the fact he hadn’t during his last two attempts had been nothing short of a miracle.

 

That’s how he knew he needed the Sinaloa cartel, whether or not he agreed with it morally. Which he didn’t – but he found himself doing a lot of reprehensible things these days.

 

The Galactic Federation was part of it, for sure, but the cartel had been purely reprehensible long before aliens were thrown into the mix. Sure, their dynamic changed, but for the better? No. Prescription tablets lost most of their worth with the Federation deploying use of them like they were sweets, but in terms of the illegal drug trade, it provided a wealth of substances to cut and dilute narcotics with that provided better side effects, or at the very least, meted out some of the less unpleasant ones. Production of methamphetamine and cocaine increased dramatically, as did wholly new substances.They had the men though, the man power, and access to spacecrafts, and Morty's the only one able to get past the lazy netted "No Fly Zone," that the Federation had put over what they designated "Troubled Spots," - to try to halt the drug trade. That's where the portal gun came in, and therefore Morty, who had the good grace to lie about the complexity of the device with Garcia vouching for his trustworthiness. Mostly, he just considered himself a transporter, but after two years, Morty had...changed. He shifted alien stuff – the purple shit – from Alectus 8 that was crazy popular in Central America, and seeping to other places, Brugadine – or whatever they were calling it now. Garcia preferred calling it _the púrpura,_  like most people here did.  Morty nursed his bright red tepache and felt the sweetness tickling his throat. Yeah, this he could stomach – hardly alcoholic, light amount of beer in it at best, perfectly sweet, sinfully delicious. It didn’t do much to distract him from the day they’d had though, even just staring at the bright red hue reminded him of the blood bleaching the sands of El Salvador – their last pit stop after they’d finished with the Honduras. Beautiful places, rich with culture – but unfortunate crime hives, the Honduras actually being the most dangerous for homicide rates in the world, even dwarfing the numbers from other planets within the Federation that had cultures which entirely thrived on war.

 

It's no wonder the Galactic Federation couldn't afford to expend enough manpower to try to deal with the problems in certain regions of Earth, especially as the underworld began to flourish and develop from the sudden alien migration. It left Morty with the uncomfortable choice of having to leave behind the safety of Seattle, because if he ever wanted his family back to normal, he needed Rick, and if he needed to do anything, he needed to go to unregulated zones, especially if he ever wanted to go off-world without someone monitoring his every action. It's why he had to root around the Underground network until he found Garcia, and sold off what few weapons he was able to recover from Rick's inbuilt defensive systems that Morty had managed to figure out back in their home in Seattle. It had been enough to get him afloat to El Paso anyway. 

 

"That's when shit hit the fan - yeah? Imagine my face when this scrawny kid comes barrelling out of the crate, biting federales at the checkpoint," Garcia snorted - pointed at Morty with his finger. "-That's when I knew you weren't shitting me about being Sanchez blood."

 

"If you got caught, I got caught, but it's okay, I - I got your back now, for real," Morty adds as an afterthought, missing the blinding smile Garcia gives him. The table is lit up with a bright, decorative Mexican sugar skull as October crept up, a candle stuck into its caved in bone, but as the dark wax drips down it, all Morty can think of is what Molvakian blood looks like. 

 

Garcia frowns, usually reflecting on what an awkward little dweeb Morty had been sort of cheered him up, reminded him of his goals - destroying the Federation, breaking out Sanchez, getting his life back. It seems the sacrifices Morty had to make though - Beth, Jerry, Seattle, his humanity, that knotting he'd get in his chest and stomach when he had to take a living being's life, the innocent bumbling goodness - were too much. It seemed gone, and maybe it was - but sometimes, Garcia swears, he catches it in short moments, like when he walks past street beggars and throws down blemflarks - or _Fed Creds_ as Garcia called them, since the peso got shitcanned relatively quickly as did most world currencies in one forceful switch over. Sometimes, Morty would stop for icecream, and even as an eighteen year old, hardened, angry little man - he'd catch hesitant smiles, and a distant look. 

 

 _Probably remembering better times_ , Garcia mused.

 

"Would any of them believe Muerte Sanchez was a pee-pants little pollito who clung to my arm for the first three months if I told them? Well, El Tio might, he remembers how tiny you looked," Garcia practically cooed, and Morty felt himself flushing. The nickname he didn't know how to deal with, but he supposed Morty didn't exactly inspire fear, and had to do that - because he wasn't like Rick. He wasn't somebody who could invent weapons of mass destruction out of sheer boredom, he couldn't manipulate the world around him. He found himself consciously trying to figure out what the most shocking, charged thing he could say or do in a situation was, just so he wouldn't betray how hard he was acting. It was a sort of "fake it till you make it" deal, and Garcia had been surprised how quickly Morty adapted to a position of power. He had trouble being decisive sometimes, but that was something Garcia proudly could say he was beating out of him over a long period of time. He expected more existential dread when it came to the....messier parts of the job.

 

And yes, Morty had been incredibly high strung about the reprehensible things he had to do...in the beginning. Yet at the same time, some part of him was too comfortable with actually going through the motions, but when Morty knocks back some more tepache and relents to letting Garcia pour him a shot, and tells him stories about being dragged at the tender age of fourteen to an illegal arms deal, and even partaking in things like a planetary purge, he could admit in the darkness of the bar that he wasn't - he wasn't all good. He had a great and terrifying propensity for violence, something the Sinaloans exploited greatly.

 

Garcia had been fucking relieved, it meant there was hope for Morty after all - because this kind of life wasn't for everyone. Morty wanted to be a freedom fighter, he wanted to break apart the control of the Federation, get life back to the way it should be and get Rick back and move forward. 

 

"Sc-Screw you," Morty choked on the shot a little, and when Garcia began smiling at his poor constitution, he flushed even darker still, and muttered a more colourful curse. "Pendejo," - before laying back in the chair and sighing. His hand flew up to his ear, a habit that his companion noticed he had. It was an interesting piece of tech hanging in his ear, and for the longest of time, he just noticed Morty would squeeze it lightly in his hands when he was thinking, until Garcia eventually got frustrated and dragged him to a piercing parlour in Tijuana so he could "actually wear the fucking thing," - which had turned out to be a monumentally good decision. It allowed him to understand 38 different alien languages and dialects, with the ability to program in more, if he'd known how, which made transportation of goods from Alectus 8 to Mexico a lot easier.

 

"I didn't know left from up, alright? You chucked - chucked us in the middle of the desert, and the last time I'd been let out was to pee and to bite a chunk out of a fed," Morty can still remember feeling the Gromflomite flesh between his teeth, even two years on after the fact with plenty of horror to fill the intermediary between then and now. "I never did this sort of stuff on my own, but then they took my sister - _mi hermana!_ \- Garcia. The one person who didn't go completely insane, and now she's in some shitty re-education facility learning how to dispose of toxic alien waste," Morty snarled. He'd contemplated getting Summer out of course - even giving her the option, even thought about taking her off world and setting her up externally with periodic payments where she wouldn't have to get involved in this...this fucking mess Morty's in. Summer wants to stay though, because she wants to be able to go home to her parents on the given "supervised" holidays and make sure Beth and Jerry are okay and she couldn't do that as an enemy of the Federation. Secondly, she - she wouldn't let up without knowing what Morty was involved in.

 

He hadn't the heart to tell her, and now he's more alone than he's ever been, his hands striped with the blood of every species he's ever come across, and when he sleeps at night, he imagines swimming in his own.

 

How the hell did Rick do this? Well, he was smart enough to not need "bigger" help, like Morty did. He made his own weapons, he didn't a cartel because he  _was_ the cartel, he was a one man army and Morty was not. But still, the scientist had an impressive constitution that Morty would desperately find himself wishing for at night. Some day, his act is going to drop - and the only way he can slide into it is by reminding himself all of the people he deals with are horrible people, bad people who didn't deserve to live anymore than the awful people who partook in the Purge did all those years ago. He'd kill them all if he had to, and the world would be better for it - he repeats it himself before bed sometimes, just so he doesn't collapse into the sum of his parts.

 

 _'...but then you'd be the only bad person left.'_ He dismisses the thought because it's too grim to cope with right now, he has enough on his mind. Morty puts on an attitude larger than life, he has to because he's the bloodline of the most famous criminal to date, and he's young. Young, and green - with only someone who owed him a life debt as a friend and even on his best nights, he's not sure how much he can trust Garcia, even if he really, really wants to.

 

More than anything, Morty would like to not be lonely anymore, to have everything he had before the world went to hell in a handbasket. Rick, Beth, Jerry, Summer - a mundane life sprinkled with intergalactic adventure, yeah - even Rick - for all his bullshit over the years, Morty found himself less and less resentful. It turned out trying to do what you need to do at any cost because you're the only person who can was the kind of crown that wore heavy, and even though Rick didn't talk a lot about his youthful exploit, he found himself bitterly understanding.

 

_'Bet he wasn't this fucking bad though.'_

 

He shudders down another shot at Garcia's request, and puts his portal gun on the table once the bar gets a little quieter, and gives his partner a severe look.

 

"That leaves just me, and _I'm not enough._ The only person who can set this right is Rick Sanchez and if even half the stories are true in your mind - which, I've heard them all and yes, I can tell you they are, then he really is the only person who can do this. Do you understand? Do you get - you get it now Garcia? I'm running out of time and attempts too, there's another thing to think about," Morty swallows - and ploughs on "-This, my device - the one you see me use for the job. The fluid it runs on - it's running low, and I can't produce it," Morty knew this day would come, and he would reap the hell he has sewn from his involvement with El Tio if he doesn't find a solution. Garcia, who never understood the device and always watched in quiet awe, raises a brow. 

 

"But I know a place that can, but when I go there, I will have to come clean if I have any chance of getting more portal fluid. I'm going off-world for a while, I just - I put off going there for so long. Painful memories, y'know? But also if I do, they'd probably be delighted to know Grandpa Rick is holed up like a sitting duck in a Galactic Fed prison. They'd probably just kill him, so I never went. I thought about it, like a lot - their help or the cartels, and I fucking picked the cartels,"

 

_Because they're fucking Ricks. Drug dealers are more predictable than fucking Ricks. They wouldn't give a crap about Summer, or Mom, or Dad. "Infinite families you stupid Morty - you have infinite families..." - God. Fuck. This. If they even cared one fucking iota than I could have trusted them and I wouldn't be doing this. Now I need to grovel for portal fluid. Fucking great._

 

He raises himself up shakily, and tosses Garcia some credits so he can go and have fun in Morty's absence, though when Garcia looks up at him, his eyes look incredibly jaded - and he seems more like eighty-one than eighteen. It's only when Garcia gets up slowly to see him off that he decides to voice a concern, because it seems that Morty has set another date in his mind for a third attempt on invading the highest security Galactic Federation prison, only this time, he had far loftier goals than he'd had in many, many years. He just wasn't going to tell Garcia yet - not until he could secure his plans. He may as well let the guy enjoy some worry free holidays before he barrels back into his life and drags him into an intergalactic war, right? 

 

"Look Muerte - two more planets joined the Galactic Federation this morning, heard it on the radio - so that's 75% of this galaxy apparently, are you - you're really serious about this, aren't you?" he didn't know whether to be uncomfortable from the man's level of determination, or in awe, so he settled for something between the two. "-Breaking Sanchez out - I mean shit, I didn't know you'd lost _everything_ to those federales, I never understood why you had such a weird grandpa fixation," Garcia snorts crudely, knowing just how those words bristle Morty in just the wrong way, but the boy still looks emotionally exhausted, face hardened past a point of him being able to show his anger. "But do you understand how much harder this is getting? How long can you keep El Tio happy, to lend you men and fire power for all the times you fail? Every day it seems like they're just getting more and more powerful."

 

That expression never sat well with Garcia, _it didn't suit his sweet face,_ he thought, he just wants to propose the idea that Morty has the idea of giving up once he gets his fluid, and that they have a good.. (well, not morally speaking) thing going, but Morty gives him a glacial reception.

 

"You...want to wage war, against.... _an entire galaxy?"_ Garcia found himself spluttering on the last of his tequila, and wiping his nose on the back of his hand, looking at Morty with an expression like he'd grown an extra few limbs. Sure, okay, he understood needing more portal fluid, he understood needing to keep the good thing he's got going, since he's not living like some gutter rat like other Federation rejects, and as wanted men go, he's living the high life compared to how it could be. In a lot of ways, it would be easier to resign himself to the new world order, to keep his dangerous life until he went out in a blaze of glory since it's very rarely that anybody in this business lives long enough to retire. It would be easier, but no.

 

Morty gave him a hard look, he knows what Garcia is skirting around. The _"You don't have to do this"_ bit.

 

"The galaxy doesn't give me a goddamn choice in the matter. Now go have fun, buy yourself a couple of busty mamacitas alright? I've got stuff to do," his skin gets lit up by that beautiful, haunting green hue that Garcia isn't sure he'll ever get used too, not even after two years.

 

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do,"

 

Morty stepped in, and headed for the Citadel of Ricks for the first time in four years.

 


End file.
